François saw the Hitler stamp and asked, ‘News from Ruben?’
Hinda nodded. Grateful for a topic of conversation, she reported that a letter had arrived at Rotwandstrasse only yesterday, and it had been so strange that neither she nor Zalman had really been able to make head or tail of it. The letter itself was at home, but she could recite it almost by heart. Previously, Ruben had kept reporting new irritations and instances of bullying, his letters, Hinda said, could have been bound into a Black Book, and now all of a sudden here he was writing that they shouldn’t worry about him, and please to lend no credence to the horrific propaganda that was sadly being disseminated even in the Swiss newspapers. Germany was a country in which law and order prevailed, he wrote, where nothing was ever done to anyone unless he had broken the law. A new Reich was coming into being, so exemplary that it almost corresponded to that ideal state described by the scholar Rabbah bar bar Chana in the Talmud, and he, Ruben, was grateful that he had been allowed to make a modest contribution to that construction in his own town of Halberstadt.
‘Do you understand that?’ asked Hinda. ‘He can’t really mean it.’
François ran both index fingers from his upper lip and across his cheeks, his old gesture when he felt superior to others. ‘Do I really have to explain that to you as a goy? Have you forgotten the stories Uncle Pinchas always told us? About the campfire on the back of a fish, or about the crocodile as big as a town with sixty houses? Those were all stories told by Rabbah bar bar Chana.’
‘So?’
‘They’re all lies. Tall stories.’
‘You mean…?’
‘They’ve probably started censoring letters going abroad. So he’s writing the opposite of what he means, and mentions Rabbah bar bar Chana so that we know how to read it. They may even have threatened him. From what one hears, in Germany you can end up in a re-education camp for less than a letter.’
Hinda, entirely accustomed to the orderly conditions in Switzerland, had never even thought of such a thing, but now that François said it, she was sure he was right. The most terrible rumours were going around about those education camps and the things that happened in them. No one knew exactly, but it was assumed to be terrible. And now her son Ruben…? She took a shocked, deep breath, as someone falling from a bridge gasps for water just before the water closes over him.
Arthur was shocked as well, but in his case the emotion had little to do with Ruben. He was thinking about all the letters Rosa Pollack had written to him from Kassel. If she found herself in difficulties, if she was arrested or even locked up, it would be his fault.
His alone.
Because he had failed in everything that he had tried to do for her.
‘Anyway, I don’t understand why Ruben didn’t come back to Switzerland long ago,’ said François.
‘He doesn’t want to.’
‘Meshuga,’ said François, and the word sounded strange from his lips.
‘It’s because of his community. But now,’ Hinda said resolutely, ‘now he has to think about his children. I’ll write to him today and tell him to come.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘Then Zalman will have to go and get him.’
‘I should go and fetch someone too,’ thought Arthur. ‘But they wouldn’t let her over the border.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’
A waiter came out of the pub. His apron reached to the ground; you couldn’t see his feet moving, so that he seemed to float. On a tray he balanced everything that belongs to a lavish breakfast: a steaming jug, fresh rolls, eggs, cheese, jam. He set the tray on the table, where it sank like a stone into dark water, without leaving a trace. Then he shoved up alongside François on the bench, carefully straightening his apron as a well-bred lady might straighten the hem of her skirt. ‘You don’t mind if I join you for a moment?’
‘You’re dead!’ said François. ‘When will you finally admit it?’
‘When I no longer need to be alive.’
Uncle Melnitz looked cheerful, almost exuberant. Even the smell that emanated from him had changed, as dust changes its smell when it rains. ‘It’s starting up again,’ he said, and rubbed his hands as if before an interesting job or a good meal. ‘I can feel it in all my bones: it’s starting up again, yes.’
‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ said Hinda.
‘Of course not, my lovely, of course not.’ Uncle Melnitz’s arm was suddenly so long that he was able to pat Hinda’s cheek across the table. ‘Just you keep your hands over your ears. Shut your eyes. Then nothing will happen to your son. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t happen.’
‘What do you want from us?’ asked Arthur, even though he knew exactly what Uncle Melnitz wanted.
‘I want to tell you a story,’ said the old man. They had never seen him so full of life. ‘I’m sure you want to know where I got my name.’
They didn’t want to know. Actually they didn’t want to know anything about him at all. But when Uncle Melnitz wanted to tell a story, he did so.
‘Sixteen hundred and forty-eight,’ he said. He let the syllables melt away on his tongue. ‘A wonderful year. The Thirty Years’ War was coming to an end, and there was peace all across Europe. Although not for the Jews. Perhaps because we calculate time differently. For us it wasn’t 1648, it was 5408. 5409. Terrible years.’
‘We don’t want to hear your old stories,’ said François. He tried to stand up, but Uncle Melnitz pressed him effortlessly back down onto his seat. The more often he died, the stronger he became.
‘You’ll like this story,’ he said. ‘You most of all, Shmul. There are Jews in it who have themselves baptised.’
Uncle Melnitz hadn’t been so young for ages.
‘It was in the Ukraine,’ he said, ‘which wasn’t yet called the Ukraine. Countries change their names. They also change their friends. Only their enemies always stay the same. We always stay the same, yes.
‘The story I want to tell you is about Bohdan Khmelnitsky. Do you know the name? Of course you do. For our sins God punished us Jews with a good memory. If someone has done something particularly bad to us, we say, “May his name be erased.” And then we remember it for all eternity.’ Uncle Melnitz laughed. He threw his laughter onto the table, a hand full of sharp-edged pebbles.
‘Bohdan Khmelnitsky, yes. He wanted to wage a war with his Cossacks against the Polish magnates who ruled the Ukraine, and because it was such a long way to Poland he first took it out on the Jews. It’s an old game. The crusaders played it in their day too. Jerusalem was so far away, and the Jews were so close at hand. Khmelnitsky never got to Warsaw. He only got as far as Pereiaslav. Pyriatyn. Lokhvytsya.’
‘You’re dead,’ said Hinda. ‘You don’t exist any more.’
‘Good!’ said Uncle Melnitz, and drew out the vowel as if he were praising a child. ‘Goooood! You’ve worked it out. None of them exist any more. They’re all dead. In Pohrebyshche. In Zhivotov. In Nemyriv. In Tulchyn. In Polonne.’
‘I don’t even know where those places are!’ Arthur heard himself shouting, even though he hadn’t shouted at all.
‘Of course you don’t,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘That’s why I’m telling you about them. So that you remember when it starts up again there. In Sasov. In Ostroh. In Kostyantyniv. In Bar.’
Hinda threw her hands over her face, as she had done when Zalman’s train set off from the station for Galicia and disappeared among the winding tracks. ‘Please, please, please…’
‘Pleading doesn’t help,’ said Melnitz, and threw the next handful of pebbles on the table. ‘It never helped. Not in Kremenetz. Not in Chernigov. Not in Starodub. Not in Narol.’